Both sides in America’s great divide

I had promised myself I wasn’t going to spend money to see the Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor fight. McGregor is a great mixed martial arts fighter and proud Irishman but a perpetual shit-talker who took the low road in promoting this fight. Floyd Mayweather is one of the best boxers the sport has ever produced but is a wife-beating jerk no sane person wants to make richer.

But some friends invited me to meet them for the fight and I enjoyed seeing Conor McGregor’s last fight with them, so I met up with them at Hooters of Farmingdale on Long Island.

There is no charming way you can tell your wife you are going to Hooters. I have disliked Hooters because I think if you want to go to a strip club you should man up and go to a strip club. Hooters wants to treat its waitresses like strippers but not pay them like strippers. But I wasn’t going to argue against a night out.

The great racial divide in America was easy to divine looking at the dining room of Hooters, which is a better place to take the pulse of the nation than The Palm Court at the Plaza. I think I saw two tables that were not racially homogenous. There was no bad blood that I saw. No one had any harsh words for anyone else, but the essential tribal nature of human life was on full display. Some of the white customers had t-shirts that read ‘Fook Mayweather,’ poking fun at McGregor’s Irish brogue while insulting the experienced boxer. When Mayweather won the fight, a black customer at a neighboring table stood on his chair to gloat.

America’s house is definitely divided, even the Hooters on Long Island. I was expecting there to be more quality fights in the parking lot than on the pay-per-view screen; likewise with the crowd at the fight in Las Vegas. It didn’t play out that way. There was no violence at the Hooters at the end of the night, just people settling their bills and going their separate ways.

We all like to think that we’re the open-minded exception to the pervasive divides of our time, but we all have an intrinsic need to draw our lines and take an accounting of our allies and enemies. You are forced to choose sides in life once fists start to fly, even if you are disgusted with the whole sham.

I certainly wanted McGregor to win. No self-respecting Irishman would root against him, no matter how obnoxious his pre-fight conduct was. But wanting him to win and expecting him to win are two different things, and the odds were such that I would happy if he lasted more than a few rounds.

After a long undercard and several helpings of wings and appetizers, it was time for the fight. McGregor went 10 rounds in his first ever professional boxing match with a fighter who is arguably one of the best ever. Mayweather came out of years of retirement to fight one of the best combat sports starts of today who is more than a decade younger. They both walked out of the ring with their heads held high, and rightfully so.

After the bout, both fighters were gracious and respectful. It was heartening to see these men be civil after spending months insulting one another. Then again, they had exploited America’s great racial divide to make millions of dollars on a fight that had no business taking place.

The crowd dispersed to either curse or celebrate the fortunes of their proxy combatants, but those fighters came away the big winners. And therein lies the more telling divide: the millionaires in that fight have more in common with each other than they do with anyone who shelled out for the pay-per-view. A foreigner who was on welfare five years ago and a black man who can barely read rode this race-baiting shit show all the way to the bank and had the last laugh on the rest of us. That’s the American way. 

A Dog That Didn’t Hunt This Time

The most deplorable thing about the general election was the awful choices voters were handed. The wife of a former President and a shady real estate mogul best known for hosting a reality television show? There was no way the outcome could be anything less than embarrassing. Each candidate deserved to lose.

There’s not much negative about Donald Trump that he didn’t say himself. He refused to even read the news during his campaign, brushing aside the pleas of his staff that he prepare for debates or learn about the world he was asking to lead. He’s arrogant and vulgar and his life is a monument to bad taste and delusions of grandeur. He’s been wrong about almost everything. But he was right on illegal immigration and crime and America is so desperate for people to speak at least partially honestly on controversial topics that this paid big dividends at the polls.

Hillary Clinton is an intelligent person with political skills and a mastery of the law and public policy. While there’s no doubt she got to where she was in large part because she is a former first lady, she’d be a formidable candidate and no question the most qualified by experience on the ballot. No one doubted her intelligence or her skill. But her career has been marred by repeated short-sighted judgements based almost solely on political calculation. In the end Hillary Clinton outsmarted herself.

The Clinton campaign followed the conventional wisdom of American politics that says accusations of racism is the Kryptonite of Republican candidates. Anyone so shamed with that scarlet ‘R’ is supposed to meekly apologize for whatever infraction they’ve committed, and sulk off to political purgatory. Trump threw that political calculus out the window and if fortune smiles upon our republic it will be his enduring legacy.

Trump set the stage early with his stand against illegal immigration. It was considered radical and extreme because he delivered a speech with his usual bombast. But the Democrats’ year-long overreaction to Trump’s stand against illegal immigration was their biggest gift to him.

You can’t solve a problem by pretending it doesn’t exist or trying to demonize those who want to fix it, even if your opponent is an ignorant blowhard. Illegal immigration on the scale we have now suppresses wages, brings criminal aliens into the country, poses serious public health risks, and often places unfair burdens on state and local governments forced to provide higher levels of service for populations that pay little or no taxes. You would have to be a reclusive millionaire not to see first-hand some of the negative effects unchecked immigration has had on our country. Somehow the view from Trump Tower was better than that from Chappaqua.

[N.B.: The idea of building a wall to solve the immigration problem shows just how clueless Trump is. Many if not most illegal immigrants enter the U.S. legally and then overstay their visas and Mexican cartels have shown themselves extremely adept at digging tunnels.]

Instead of serious policy solutions to issues of immigration and crime, Democrats delivered pompous moral lectures and in doing so they helped hand the election to Donald Trump. While it was impossible to cast a vote for either candidate, it was fun watching the premature Clinton victory celebration dissolve into a weepy pity party.

But what Trump supporters will soon realize is that they’ve been sold a false bill of goods. Trump is no real populist, and he’s aligned himself with religious conservatives hostile to science. It’s good to no longer ignore realities that were verboten in American political discourse, but Trump has never been interested in helping working-class Americans before. He’s a snake oil salesman. His willingness to speak a few harsh truths somehow overshadowed his bulwark of lies and empty boasts. 

But the game has been changed in at least one positive way: The valid concerns of working-class Americans can no longer be shunted to the nether regions of the Internet by smearing them as “racist.” That’s the silver lining of Trump’s victory; it may be the only one.

New York City Eats Activist Mayors for Black Brunch

It is frustrating to see gifted people throw away opportunities and waste their talents, and that’s the impression I get when I read about New York City’s current mayor, Bill de Blasio. Mayor de Blasio set out to be a more liberal Fiorello LaGuardia but may go down in history as the white David Dinkins.

            Our mayor is in trouble because he’s pursuing a very liberal activist agenda and New York mayors never really get a mandate to pursue a liberal activist agenda.

The problem isn’t that New York City voters aren’t liberal, it’s that New York City is comfortable enough with its liberal political leanings that the large cultural issues that consume debate in the other parts of the country have long ago been settled here. Gay civil unions in the city started more than 20 years ago. In New York even the Republicans are all pro-choice. New York City’s gun laws are among the strictest in the nation (unconstitutionally so in my opinion).

So a liberal Democratic mayor who has big ambitions to make waves on social issues is largely going to be preaching to the converted and, more importantly, not focusing on actually running New York City.

Running the city takes the full attention of City Hall. New York City has a larger population than some states. The New York City Police Department is larger than some nations’ standing armies. There is a large public transit system that is at the mercy of the State of New York government, an enormous educational system and a multitude of public services and complexities that need constant management and planning.

When a mayor becomes enamored with causes beyond the very real world applications of running New York, they quickly lose their bearings and earn the city’s scorn. This is what has happened with Mayor de Blasio. While he was swept into office with high hopes and a lot of progressive promises, his attempts to be an activist mayor have left the city in need of a no-nonsense manager again.

Our more recent past mayors fell into this same trap. Rudolph Giuliani squandered his political capital on trying to position himself to run for higher office. Michael Bloomberg went off the rails trying to police our diets.  

Mayor de Blasio seems to have done himself in on several fronts, but most importantly is that he appears willing to undo the work that Rudolph Giuliani did in cleaning up crime in New York. He voiced support with those protesting the police and let protesters shut down parts of the city. His treatment of the police has been so shoddy that cops turned their back on him en masse when officers were killed in Brooklyn by a #BlackLivesMatter-inspired madman.

This perception doesn’t entirely match reality. The crime statistics don’t say that New York is sliding into the crime-ridden morass of three or four decades ago. But de Blasio had already painted himself into a corner. He aligned himself early with activists who see racial bias in everything the police do; he doesn’t have the luxury of speaking truth to the activists who helped elect him. Not content to simply stop traffic in protesting the police, the #BlackLivesMatter movement started targeting diners in restaurants that they deemed “white spaces” in BlackBrunchNYC protests.

As a parent of girls whom I expect to enter the New York City public schools, de Blasio’s efforts to degrade the standards on gifted programs and elite high schools terrify me. The best defense for my girls’ future will happen in 2017 when we get a chance to make Bill de Blasio a one-term mayor. 

The Other Side of the “Demographic Dilemma”

The going conventional wisdom regarding voter turnout in the latest presidential election is that the changing racial demographics of the U.S. mean that certain policies are now completely off limits and that the Republican Party faces certain doom unless it mends its evil ways.

There’s no doubt the Republican Party needs to do some work. With hooting ignoramuses that made insane quips about rape, abortion and evolution, I’d hate to see the candidates they turned away.

But the demographic argument is the one that is the most one-sided and simplistic and fails to look at the entire picture of racial politics.

Blacks, Hispanics and Asians are growing in number and since they all are voting predominantly Democratic now, the Republicans need to adopt policies that will appeal to these groups on nakedly racial lines if they want to cobble together electoral victory, so the theory goes.

It quickly became a tired mantra: The Republican Party needs to expel all those mean old racist white men who don’t believe in open borders or affirmative action or else the GOP is going to lose every national election.

What this account leaves out is the opposite side of this equation: If non-white ethnic groups are on the increase and are voting in large blocks, then whites are expected to vote as a block as well. The same forces of racial demography that apply to nonwhites apply to whites. 

Mitt Romney got a higher percentage of the white vote than John McCain, so whites are already voting more along racial lines. Why should they not? It’s somehow the cool thing to do in our “post-racial” America. A ham-handed candidate, Mitt Romney got a sizeable majority of the nation’s largest ethnic voting block without taking any really substantial stand on controversial issues like immigration. That should scare the bejesus out of liberal Democrats thinking in the long-term.

The left has successfully demonized any criticism of illegal immigration or affirmative action as inherently “racist.” Never mind that illegal immigration disproportionately harms blacks and Hispanics, as even respected liberal economists have pointed out. And affirmative action and other racial preference policies have the effect of excluding Asians and Jews at higher rates than whites. Asian and Jewish voters still vote predominantly Democratic, for now.

The dream among Democrats today is that this new multiethnic America will see blacks and Hispanics unite with the enlightened whites to defeat the evil cabal of Caucasian Scrooges and usher in the progressive American utopia that was meant to be.

But as machinery meant to realize this dream of a harmonious multiracial society keeps humming along, more and more whites and Asians will come to the realization that it’s them on the losing side of the multicultural math. Again, it’s not going to be due to anything but a shift in numbers. The greater number of nonwhites in the population, the greater number of whites pushed aside by government policies meant to do just that. More whites will start voting Republican (or whatever party replaces the GOP as the new “white” party). And now that the genie of racial demarcation is out of bottle, white voters are going to begin to vote more in a block than before.

Another giant misperception of the “demographic dilemma” perspective is that the nonwhite coalition forged by the Obama campaign is going to hold in the long-term. Blacks, Hispanics and Asians don’t all give each other giant hugs and sing “Kumbaya” in the celebration of not being white. They are as different and distrustful of one another as any other ethnic coalition that’s stapled together. Asians gain the least out of this bargain, being disproportionately injured by affirmative action. And blacks and Hispanics will need better reasons to remain in the same voting block other than not voting for a white candidate.

The Republican argument that blacks and Hispanics are forever lashed to the Democratic Party by entitlement programs, even if 100% true, is an argument with a short shelf life. The U.S. government is broker than broke, and it’s only a matter of time before the ax comes down, even on the sacred cows of Social Security and Medicare.

Just as our systems of cash-and-carry corporate government and rampant speculative financial cronyism fell apart under their own weight, so too will the multiple constructs meant to create a more racially balanced society. There’s no way to create a multiethnic mosaic in every institution without going to more ridiculous and obvious lengths. Even the most reckless gambler will eventually walk away from a stacked deck.

What this has meant so far has put whites on the losing side of several issues. Unchecked illegal immigration puts pressure on the public services of various municipalities all over the country. The U.S. government brings lawsuits against states that try to regulate this on their own. And President Obama’s second term promises more of the same disparate impact-based civil rights pursuits that has produced a de-facto racial spoils system.

The racial stratification of the American electorate cuts deep, but it cuts both ways.  

Groupthink and Unfashionable Facts

The current atmosphere surrounding the shooting of a Florida teenager by a neighborhood watch volunteer is one of frightening groupthink and near hysterical self-serving bloodlust.

If you haven’t seen it plastered all over the news, on Feb. 26, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by 28-year-old neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. Zimmerman claimed self defense and the police did not charge him with any crime. News of this incident has sparked a nationwide outcry among black racial activists and their political allies. The Department of Justice has begun investigating the case and the chief of police of the town of Sanford, Florida has temporarily stepped down.

The narrative that popular sentiment promotes is that this is a case of racial profiling turning murderous. That a white (though later identified as a mixed-race Hispanic) man thought a black teenager was a criminal simply because he was black and murdered him after provoking an altercation.

Even assuming the worst of the case, that the shooter harbors racial prejudice and was acting completely irresponsibly when he followed Trayvon Martin, there is still not enough evidence to charge him with murder. Furthermore, there is yet to be convincing evidence that the authorities erred in the decision not to charge him with a crime in the first place.

“Hey, we’ve had a lot of break-ins in my neighborhood and there’s a real suspicious guy…” So begins George Zimmerman’s 911 call to police. Even if you believe that the call contains a muttered racial slur on the part of Zimmerman, the call is not a racist rant but a call from a concern citizen who sees activity he finds suspicious and then grows frustrated when the suspicious person moves to avoid detection.

Zimmerman describes Martin’s behavior before he’s fully aware of Martin’s race. During the call, he tells the 911 operator that the suspect is possibly under the influence of drugs and is holding something in his waistband. He reports that the subject is now staring at him and then confirms that the suspect is black.

It is true that Trayvon Martin did not have a gun and that Zimmerman followed him and was suspicious of him. It’s also true that Zimmerman, and not Martin, has a criminal record including a charge of assaulting an officer and at least one complaint of domestic violence.

But one critical aspect of the case is often overlooked and is essential to determining whether the shooter acted lawfully. That is: it has been reported that Zimmerman was on the ground screaming for help and being punched by Martin when the shooting occurred. So far nothing has shaken that assertion. It’s backed up by witnesses and appears to be corroborated by later 911 tapes of people who called after hearing the two men fighting outside.

That’s a tough pill to swallow for the keyboard commandos publishing Zimmerman’s home address and calling for his blood. But if Zimmerman was being beaten by Martin and was screaming for help, as witnesses appear to confirm, then there’s no case against Zimmerman at all, no matter what kind of jerk he might be.

Zimmerman was indeed advised not to pursue Martin by the police and it appears he ignored this advice since the two met up later. Zimmerman complains on his 911 call about Martin possibly getting away. It is after this remark that the alleged racial slur occurs. For some reason, this has been seized upon as reason to declare the shooting unlawful, but the point, while it certainly is a damaging display of poor character is true, wouldn’t change facts if he was indeed on the defensive when he shot Martin. At least one report indicates that after exchanging words, Zimmerman was heading back to his vehicle and was struck from behind.

But as is often the case, the mainstream media falls in line relatively quickly and sticks to a predictable narrative. In doing so, many facts get tossed quickly out the window. In the Sanford, Florida shooting, the media is in the mode of portraying Martin as nothing but an innocent victim and Zimmerman as a villainous, racist ogre. But the shooting has to be judged by the evidence of the shooting itself. The calls for Zimmerman’s arrest fly in the face of the basic facts of the case.

And sadly, so far, the Trayvon Martin case is just that: racial hysteria that is inflated into front-page news by an echo-chamber media too scared to look at facts and tell the hard truth.

Stop Apologizing

Too much of our public discourse today is focused on taking offense and forcing apology, and it’s time for people to quit apologizing.

The latest public figures to beat their breast and beg forgiveness are the executives of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, which put pieces of fortune cookies into its Taste the Lin-Sanity frozen yogurt. Lin-Sanity refers to New York Knicks player Jeremy Lin, who came off the bench to become a basketball sensation. He’s a much-needed piece of good news for the often-suffering New York Knicks and a punishing pun prompt for tabloid headline writers.

That Jeremy Lin is an Asian American in the N.B.A. is part of what makes him unique. I can count the number of Asian-American Harvard graduates in the N.B.A. on one finger. Being Chinese is what made former Houston Rockets center Yao Ming an advertising commodity when he was playing in the U.S. That the fortune cookie pieces reference his being Asian isn’t an insult to Asians. He’s Chinese-American, so are fortune cookies. You can argue that it’s hokey, common and simplistic, but offensive? Maybe in Harvard Square, but not by New York standards.

And did anyone really think that the ice cream company was trying to make an ethnic insult? If there’s a corporation with more progressive bona fides than Ben & Jerry’s, I haven’t heard of it.

If they named an ice cream after me, they’d have to put chunks of Irish cheddar cheese in it; and while that would be an insult to ice cream lovers, it would not be an ethnic insult to me or Irish Americans. And even if Ben & Jerry’s came out with an Irish writers’ ice cream that played to ethnic stereotypes and was filled with whiskey swirls and Guinness-infused chocolate chips, we really shouldn’t get offended. Whiskey and beer are what we Irish are known for (even if some of us don’t drink) and the ice cream would be delicious. It would also sell out in about five minutes.

I’d like for once to see someone under attack for being offensive to refuse to apologize. Ben & Jerry’s was clearly not trying to insult Jeremy Lin, Chinese people, or even New York Knicks fans. It would be great for a tie-dye wearing hippie from Vermont to be the first to come out and say, “I don’t apologize. Fuck you if you don’t like it.” I won’t hold my breath.

Multiculturalism As 21st Century McCarthyism

After ten years of being a regular commentator on MSNBC, Pat Buchanan was officially given the boot on Feb. 16. It marks a new low in the witch hunt against “racists” that marks “anti-racism” and multiculturalism as the resurgent McCarthyism in today’s political climate. The mass hysteria that once had the Wisconsin Senator looking under every rock for communists is now looking under every rock for racists.

I once liked MSNBC. While they have a definitely slanted point of view, they used to encourage dissenting opinion. Years ago liberal Ron Kuby and conservative Curtis Sliwa hosted a show together on the network and it was interesting to see two people with so diametrically opposing viewpoints discuss the news of the day. Buchanan was a once regular on the liberal Rachel Maddow show, where he and Maddow would debate the issues at hand with vigor but mutual respect. She even referred to Buchanan as “Uncle Pat.”

I don’t agree with many of Pat Buchanan’s views, but he’s always presented them in a logical way with an insightful knowledge of international affairs and the workings of the U.S. political system.

Thinking people of all political persuasions should make it a point to read and listen to people they strongly disagree with; you’re cheating yourself if you don’t do so. If you refuse to listen to opposing points of view, you risk turning your head into a useless echo chamber.

The mélange of groups that called for Buchanan’s head didn’t do so because he is a hatemonger, they did so because he isn’t. If he was a hateful blowhard, he would be easily discredited and his views would have no chance of catching on. (Observe the same smear tactics recently used on Presidential candidate Ron Paul).

And when MSNBC fired Pat Buchanan, they didn’t do so because they were offended by his views. His views have been public for more than 30 years. MSNBC fired Buchanan out of fear. They were afraid of being branded as racist or as giving harbor to racists. Many times in our political discourse, particularly in our discussions of race and multiculturalism, people are acting out of fear. Criticizing anything not in line with left-leaning policies risks being branded as a racist in today’s world, and people do not want to see their careers destroyed by being branded with the scarlet ‘R.’

When you have large groups of people acting or failing to act out of fear, our political discourse suffers and our democracy is diminished.

Joseph McCarthy started with a premise that most people could agree with: totalitarian Communism was bad and if there were agents of the Soviet Union infiltrating the U.S. government, they should be found out. But Joseph McCarthy’s name is on the same ash heap of history as Soviet Communism because he became a tyrant. His quest to destroy Communism blinded him to the very reason Americans ought to oppose Communism.

So it is today with issues of race and multiculturalism. Efforts to fight racism have blinded people to the very reasons they should oppose it. It has brought us mind-numbing fanatical nonsense such as the slogan “Hate speech is not free speech,” the branding of conservative critics as “white supremacists” or “white nationalists” and even physical assaults on critics of illegal immigration and affirmative action.

Self-appointed anti-racists have become every bit as dogmatic and intolerant as the “racists” they claim to be fighting. They have lost sight of the reasoning behind their cause and reason has left them, and it shows.